If you are LEFT, you just ain't RIGHT

Tag Archives: Colorado

Over 22,000 Coloradoans have had their health insurance canceled by Obamacare in the past month – and 200,000 are slated to be shut down in 2015, the state insurance department announced Friday.

.…………

.
The Colorado Division of Insurance wrote to state Senate Republicans Friday, notifying them that five more insurance carriers have ended plans for 18,783 more Coloradoans in just the last month. By far, the most canceled plans will come from Humana Insurance Company and Humana Health Plan.

That brings the state’s Obamacare total to almost 340,000 canceled plans, according to Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, who’s in a tight race for Senate with incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Udall.

“Coloradoans continue to pay the price for Senator Udall’s broken promise,” Gardner said in a statement Friday. “It’s unfortunate that Senator Udall has been so eager to please President Obama that he has forgotten thousands of Coloradoans across our state.”

Widespread Obamacare cancellations have been a political loser for Obamacare-supporters across the country, but the issue is especially fraught in Colorado.

Udall, who voted for Obamacare and made the same debunked promises as President Obama that Americans could keep their health insurance plans, took heat earlier this year when emails suggested that his office tried to interfere with a state analysis of the number of plans cancelled by Obamacare. He was cleared of wrongdoing by a panel that refused to document its hearing.

But while over 18,000 people will be losing their coverage this month, that’s nothing compared to next year.

The Obama administration said it would allow states to extend health care plans that aren’t compliant with Obamacare through the end of 2016 and pushed the political responsibility for deciding when the plans should be canceled onto state officials. Colorado decided to extend plans through Dec. 31, 2015 – the remaining 192,942 Coloradoans that still purchase non-complaint health plans will have those canceled next November.

Far from being an unknown glitch in the health-care law, the Affordable Care Act provision that outlaws certain insurance plans was in part intended to help drive healthier, previously-insured customers to Obamacare exchanges so that insurers’ pools of customers were less populated by people with a pent-up need for health care.

The Obama administration’s several administrative fixes, which allowed states to decide whether they’d allow insurers to keep offering the plans for up to three years, make it more difficult for insurers to be profitable in Obamacare exchanges. The changes were likely part of the administration’s reasoning in its decision to open the door to using taxpayer funding to bail out companies on the exchange who suffer losses on Obamacare exchanges.

Udall’s campaign said that the Senator had pushed for Colorado to extend canceled plans for another year.

“There’s nobody more upset about the bungled roll out of the health care law than Mark,” Udall spokesman James Owens said. “That’s why he pushed the governor to use the authority to allow folks to keep their plans.”

Under the Obama administration’s current policy, all noncompliant plans will be canceled by Dec. 2016.

Last Friday, June 13, Governor John Hickenlooper (D) spoke to a gathering of Colorado sheriffs in Aspen during the bi-annual County Sheriffs of Colorado Conference.

During this conference, Hickenlooper admitted that he and his office failed to meet with the sheriffs when they showed up en masse at the state Capitol in Denver and also admitted that he and his office failed to do their homework on the impact and importance of background check legislation that now unnecessarily affects hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens across the Centennial State.

So, he is admitting he IGNORED, deliberately, anyone that disagreed with this idiotic bill. He also admits that he and his team on what was in the bill he signed? Basically, he just admitted that he is unfit for high office.

Hickenlooper stated that “[t]here were a thousand things going on and other issues we were dealing with, I guess I didn’t get it.” Hickenlooper went on to say that by the time he was aware of the criticism against the background check legislation, he had already signed it.

This seems not only unfortunate but also highly unlikely. Thousands of freedom-loving supporters of the Second Amendment showed up to express opposition to this bill and others like it. Individuals across the state made their presence and opposition known on a daily basis throughout the 2013 legislative session.

Oh but it gets better, as the governor proves how arrogant and disconnected he really is.

When pressed with further questions by the sheriffs, Hickenlooper interrupted the audience by saying “What more apology do you want? What the f—? I apologize!”

In other words, how dare you peasants bother me just because I signed a terrible bill that violates the Constitution against the will of the people I am supposed to serve. Please Coloradans throw this pathetic hack out of office.

.
Rather than work to fix Obama’s healthcare bill like other Democrats, Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) pressured a state agency to change the way its estimated healthcare cancellations because of Obamacare. Udall wanted the state Department of Insurance to downgrade its estimate of Obamacare-related insurance cancellations from 250,000 to just 73,000, because while the plans they liked were cancelled some Colorado residents were offered replacement plans.

Udall is broad brushing and assuming that because Anthem and Kaiser offered early renewals, the people who received that option after receiving a cancellation notice should not be counted. Commissioner Salazar would like to tell Sen. Udall that 250,000 people were in fact affected by cancellation notices,” insurance department director of external affairs Jo Donlin wrote in November, according the emails.

Emails originally obtained by CompleteColorado.com in January created controversy for the Senator and his vote for President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In one of those emails, Donlin said Udall’s office was trying to “trash” the cancellation numbers as tallied by the DOI. In another email, Donlin complained that she received a “very hostile” call from Udall’s deputy chief of staff after she had informed the Senator’s office that the DOI was unlikely to change or modify their calculation of 250,000 policy cancellations in 2013.

Udall’s office did eventually issue their own press release, which netted them a significant story in the Denver Post. In another email, Donlin sent a link of the online Denver Post story to her colleagues, pointing out that the story quoted “Sen. Udall staff,” which seems to highlight that the story did not name an individual directly. Furthermore, Donlin said the online comments were “interesting.” Many of those online comments were critical of both Udall and the Post‘s story. For example, commenter dwschulze said, “So a Democrat who supported Obamacare says that most of the cancelled policies aren’t really cancelled. And you support that with a statement from another Obamacare supporter. You need to provide some independent verification of Udall’s statement for it to be anything but another dubious statement about Obamacare.

Can’t really blame Senator Udall, like other Democrats who worked to pass Obamacare, he is desperately trying to to put lipstick on the failed pig of the President’s signature program.

.
The director of Colorado’s health exchange has been placed on administrative leave after the state discovered she had been indicted for stealing from a non-profit, the Denver Postreports:

[Christa Ann] McClure, 51, pleaded not guilty Feb. 6 in federal District Court in Montana to eight counts of theft and fraud from a nonprofit housing agency in Billings.

She was indicted Jan. 16 and notified her current Denver employer, the state-sponsored health exchange, on Monday, a few days after the story broke in Montana media, Connect for Health spokesman Ben Davis said in a telephone interview.

Connect for Health performed a criminal background check and checked references before hiring McClure in March, Davis said.

“She was completely clean,” he said. Her position as executive director of Housing Montana of Billings, he said, made her well-qualified for her post as Connect for Health’s director of partner engagement – she was liaison with state and federal partners, such as Medicaid officials. The job pays $130,000 a year.

…McClure, who has not been convicted of any charges, should have informed Connect for Health much earlier of the accusations she was facing, Davis said.

McClure was released pending trial, now scheduled for June. Each of the counts in the indictment against her carry potential penalties of five, 10 or 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

The 12-page indictment alleges that, while serving as executive director of the federally funded Housing Montana, McClure, between 2008 and 2010, paid herself “significant sums” for consulting services, although she was already on the payroll as a full-time employee.

She also made payments to her family and used federal money for personal travel, to pay family bills and to buy consulting services, the indictment alleges.

She also is accused of charging homeowners for a $750 warranty that did not exist, converting a laptop for personal use, inflating the hours she was to be compensated and writing herself a $21,000 check to which she was not entitled.

The indictment did not specify the total amount she allegedly embezzled.

Magpul Industries threatened to leave Colorado after the legislature passed a measure banning weapons magazines with more than 15 rounds.

And now that is official.

The Erie-based ammunition magazine manufacturer said Thursday it is relocating its operations to Cheyenne and Texas.

.

.
Most of the 200-plus employees will be moving to Wyoming, where manufacturing and distribution will take place, said spokesman Duane Liptak.

“Moving operations to states that support our culture of individual liberties and personal responsibility is important,” CEO Richard Fitzpatrick said in a news release. “This relocation will also improve business operations and logistics as we utilize the strengths of Texas and Wyoming in our expansion.”

The move is expected to happen within the next 12 to 16 months, the company said, and it hopes to relocate at least 92 percent of its workforce outside of Colorado in that time. It hasn’t been decided whether every single employee will be moved out of the state.

Employees were notified Thursday about the move, and most are not expected to make the move and will be out of a job, Liptak said.

Paula Mehle, economic development coordinator for the town of Erie, said there is some hope that a small number of employees will remain in Colorado. But, she said, new tenants would be sought for the buildings Magpul vacates.

“It’s a political issue at the state level that the town doesn’t have any control over,” Mehle said.

A Colorado judge says a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony must serve gay couples despite his religious beliefs, a ruling that a civil rights group hailed as a victory for gay rights.

Administrative Law Judge Robert N. Spencer ruled Friday that Jack Phillips, the owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, will face fines if he continues to turn away gay couples who want to buy wedding cakes.

“The undisputed facts show that Respondents (Phillips) discriminated against Complainants because of their sexual orientation by refusing to sell them a wedding cake for their same-sex marriage,” Spencer wrote.

Last year, David Mullins and Charlie Craig visited the Masterpiece Cakeshop to order a cake for their upcoming wedding reception. The couple had planned to marry in Massachusetts and hold a reception in Colorado.

Phillips told the men that he could not bake their cake because of his religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage. He offered to make them any other baked item, but not a wedding cake. The couple immediately left the shop and later filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division.

“Being denied service by Masterpiece Cakeshop was offensive and dehumanizing especially in the midst of arranging what should be a joyful family celebration,” Mullins said in a statement. “No one should fear being turned away from a public business because of who they are.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado hailed the ruling and said it serves as a warning.

“While we all agree that religious freedom is important, no one’s religious beliefs make it acceptable to break the law by discriminating against prospective customers,” ACLU staff attorney Amanda Goad said in a statement. “No one is asking Masterpiece’s owners to change his beliefs, but treating gay people differently because of who they are is discrimination plain and simple.”

The very notion that a business cannot deny service to “prospective” costumers is asinine. This is the problem with so-called civil rights laws many times. The intention is noble, but Leftist activists and Statists use these laws to trample the rights of business owners.